The latest single of Bertrand Cantat, a French pop singer who murdered his girlfriend and who was present in the house where his ex-wife killed herself, is being heavily played on French pop music stations. This would be of little interest to anyone who isn’t following French pop music or observing the tolerance of the French for men who abuse women, except that his new hit song is about us.
L’Angleterre (England) is vaguely an ode to a refugee camped in the jungle on the French side of the Channel, trying to get to England. Mr Cantat advises that this is not a good idea. The times are changing but nothing changes in England, where they always have another trick up their sleeves (a pun on La Manche, the English Channel). Mr Cantat laments, quoting Margaret Thatcher, the quintessential ultra-liberal, in the phrase that still rankles the French Europhiles: ‘I want my money back’.
Mr Cantat’s perspective on England is indeed coruscating and if the swing of L’Angleterre lacks something of the jolly rhythm of his previous megahit, Le Vent Nous Portera, it has more of a lament to it and risks becoming an anthem that will do nothing to improve my neighbours’ growing consensus that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is neither united nor great.
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